Last week my husband and I went to the city to see the punk/soul/gospel/rock musical bildungsroman Passing Strange. In this production at The Public, musician, writer, and on-stage narrator Stew expands the realm of ideas explored in contemporary drama and unveils the experience of marginalization within community. This production does what The Colored Museum did years ago, what For Colored Girls did before that, what Raisin in the Sun did even earlier. Passing Strange elevates Black Theater. While Ellison’s Invisible Man explores identity within American society, Passing Strange explores isolation within our society, Black society.

Stew can’t find his place in bourgeois Black life, not in the packed VW where the church youth director shares pot with all the cool kids in the choir, not even in his own mother’s cavernous California home. Unable to come-of-age in Middle (African)America, Stew goes on an ocean-crossing, country-hopping acid trip, where he explores sex, politics, art, and protest. All while his mother yearns for his return to suburbia.

Smart, funky, fun and sure to be destined for Broadway, Passing Strange deserves to be seen in the intimate space of The Public, before word-of-mouth makes the crowds even bigger.